Austan Goolsbee

In Michigan, in the mid-'80s, the unemployment rate goes way up because a lot of factories shut down. And then, the mid-2000s, to pick a date, the unemployment rate in Michigan isn't that much higher than in the rest of the country. But the main way that happened is people moved. ”

History teaches that the level of unemployment is not as important as whether the rate's going down. ”